Etc.

January 2, 2008

When a magnitude-7.2 earthquake shook Alaska's Aleutian Islands recently, a police dispatcher in Anchorage said he didn't feel it, but then he was 1,300 miles away. The chain of 300 islands extends southwestward from mainland Alaska in the northern Pacific Ocean and brushes the circum-Pacific seismic belt, one of the most active earthquake areas in the world. The most recent US Geological Survey data available, from 1974 to 2003, indicate that 57.2 percent of all US earthquakes occur in the 49th state, with California's 23.2 percent making it a distant second. The top states for earthquakes, by the number the USGS recorded during this period: